Day: October 27, 2009

We also, piously following these and such like examples of Scripture, know the time to be silent, when no one disturbeth us, and urgeth us to speak; but on the other hand, when interrogated, or the time requireth, we are bound to lift up our voice. For when we are asked for a reason for faith, {Cf. I Peter iii., 15.} or certain things to be believed, we consider it terrible to shrink [from replying]. But if we are charged with impiety, {Ảσεβείας. So, Harduin rightly. Kimmel, Εὐσεβείας.} or some other heresy, by heterodox men, who have no other object in view than supporting their own opinion by calumniating others ; then assuming the more fervent zeal of Elias, {Ἡλίου. Cf. 3 Reigns [I Kings] xix., 10.} we are roused to reply; and suffering what Jeremias did, we give utterance to the same [thoughts] as he: ‘I am pained in my belly, and the organs of my heart; my soul is in great commotion, my heart is torn; I will not keep silence, for my soul hath heard the sound of the trumpet, and the cry of the war.’ {Jer. iv., 19.} For more sounding than the terrible trumpet, and louder than the cruel war, there are now reaching us from France (how we would we had not heard them!) rumblings. For the Calvinists that are there found, gratuitously indulging in wickedness, say that our Apostolic and Holy Church, the Eastern to wit, thinketh concerning God and divine things as they themselves do wrongly think. And not only by their words, but also by their writings, do these heretics, as appeareth from a certain Claud, a minister {Ὑφηγητῆ.} of the Calvinists at Charenton, endeavour to malign us; and this it is that chiefly prompteth us to enter upon the present undertaking, they neither knowing what they say, nor whereof they confidently affirm; {Cf. I Tim. i., 7.} nor do they even respect men, before whom they dare thus to lie.

These things being so, since we are come together by the grace of Christ on the occasion of the dedication of the most divine temple of the Nativity in Bethlehem, according to the flesh, of Christ our Saviour and God; which the Lord hath been pleased should be rebuilt in these most terrible times of persecution, and should be elegantly adorned by the genuine children of the Catholic Church from all parts of the earth; there being found with us pilgrim-worshippers even from the ends of the earth, Priests, Clerics, and other Christians, we have thought it right to state briefly what the doctrine of our nursing-mother {Τιθηνός.} the Apostolic Church is as to those matters wherein she is maligned; so that through us our faith that was delivered by the Lord, and preached by the Apostles, and preserved by the holy Fathers, may be manifest in all the world; {Cf. Rom. i., 8.} and the lie of our adversaries being detected—although it hath already been detected as being obviously a mere bugbear, even by many that have been before us—the truth, as it were, shining more brightly than the sun, may be known. And if we seem to use tautology, and to be many times treating of the same matter, this is only done to help the reader of the present treatise to a more perfect understanding of what is said.

It is to be noted, therefore, that the leaders of these heretics, well knowing the doctrine of the Eastern Church, declare that she maintaineth {Πρεσβεύειν.} the same as they themselves do in what concerneth God and divine things; but of set purpose do they malign us, chiefly to deceive the more simple. For being severed, or rather rent away from the Westerns, and consequently being absolutely rejected by the whole Catholic Church, and convicted, they are manifestly heretics, and the chiefest {Κορυφαιότατοι.} of heretics. For not only have they become, from motives of self-love, propounders of new and silly dogmas (if it is allowable to call what are really only fables dogmas); but are entirely external to the Church, as having no kind of communion whatever with the Catholic Church, as hath been said. And as fearing lest those who have unhappily listened to them might perhaps be converted, they have thought how they might give utterance to this most transparent lie, that what they hold concerning the faith that the Eastern Church holdeth—God in His marvellous providence permitting this, and shewing that he who is not adorned with the Church’s name, cannot even be called a Christian, much less be a Christian; and teaching them that they should, therefore, join the Catholic Church, though they have not understood this. And this [they do], not as maintaining that our [teaching] is altogether true. For if that were so, they would not in other matters have maligned us, but would have agreed [with us] in all things; nor would they have desired to have become our teachers, who but yesterday and the day before, raging, meditated vain things; {Cf. Ps. ii., 1.} but would have been willing to learn of us, and to obey us, who hold what the Apostles preached, and what the Catholic Church hath held, and doth hold, and will in fact ever hold, until, that is, our Lord come, with God Himself our Saviour for her guide. But because we are at a distance from them, and in a way unable to acquaint all the Calvihists with the trick their leaders play upon them, it hath served their purpose, which was merely to deceive the more simple, to boast that whatever they, the Calvinists, have chosen to innovate, that the Eastern Church holdeth, and conversely. But, as it is impossible in this matter for light and darkness, or Christ and Beliar, to be together, {2 Cor. vi., 15.} so it is impossible for our adversaries, so long as they follow Calvin the heresiarch, as a leader, to be at one with the Eastern Church in what concerneth faith.

Second, on the Lutherans:

For fifty years after the madness of Luther, Martin Crusius of Tübingen in Germany, with other sophists, adherents of the novelties of Luther (for the notions of Luther and of Calvin are really very much alike, though they seem to differ in some particulars), sent the leading features {Κεφάλαια.} of their heresy to him that was then at the helm of the ship of the Apostolic Church at Constantinople, that they might know, as they said, whether they agreed with the doctrine of the Eastern Church. And that venerable man wrote unto them and against them three treatises or pragmatic answers, theologically and Orthodoxly rebuking all their heresy, and teaching them all the Orthodox mind which the Eastern Church hath held from the beginning; but none gave heed, bidding adieu to Orthodoxy.

From The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem sometimes called The Council of Bethlehem holden under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1672, translated by J. N. W. B. Robertson (London, 1899). The above section on the Calvinists is found pp 5-10, that on the Lutherans, pp 13-14. The full book is available for reading or download from Google books here. I’ve placed all footnotes in curly brackets.